The Tennessee Rural Community Opioid Response Program (TN-RCORP) Consortium, a program of Rural Health Association of Tennessee (RHA), is announcing their new "Be There" initiative.
With the goal of reducing stigma and encouraging support, the campaign aims to bring awareness to the benefits of being there for those battling behavioral health issues including substance use disorder (SUD) and opioid use disorder (OUD).
National Recovery Month aims to educate Americans that substance use treatment and mental health services can enable those with a mental and/or substance use disorder to live a healthy and rewarding life.
To start off National Recovery Month, we're sharing a few resources and will add to these as the month progresses.
September 23, 2023
We are a proud sponsor of the 4th Annual Maury County Recovery Fest!
TennCare redetermination started in April. Our Health Enrollment team will be available to assist with TennCare redetermination, enrollment, and finding low-cost and affordable healthcare options at the Maury County Recovery Fest! Translation services are also available at no cost! Can’t attend the event? Call 866-675-7092 or click here to schedule an appointment with a trained assister.
Time to Remember. Time to Act. Overdose touches people and communities in many ways. On August 31, International Overdose Awareness Day, let's support the people in our communities who go unrecognized by raising awareness of the hidden impacts of overdose, promoting education of overdose response, and reaching out to politicians to make lasting, lifesaving policy changes.
The 2023 theme, “Recognizing those people who go unseen,” is about acknowledging people in our communities who are affected by overdose but might go unseen in the crisis.
Please join TN-RCORP members, Power of Putnam and Tennessee Tech’s Counseling Honor Society Tau Tau, for a collaborative symposium to discuss new developments and best practices in substance use prevention and recovery. In person and virtual options are available.
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) offers a search tool to enable users to find a safe and environmentally responsible way to dispose of medications by identifying public disposal locations for prescription drugs, over-the-counter medicines, and other pharmaceuticals.
By entering a zip code, users can access a list of disposal locations including retail pharmacies, hospitals, and hazardous waste centers. Users can also enter a city and state.
The Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-Based Epidemics (ESSENCE) is a national syndromic surveillance system used to monitor disease trends for early detection of potential disease outbreaks.
In Tennessee, the Department of Health (TDH) is using ESSENCE to monitor weekly trends in suicidal behavior and identify regions/counties across the state seeing increased incidents of persons reporting to an emergency department for suicide-related behavior. Each week, the Suicide Prevention Program within TDH will review reports on how many people visited a local ED for suicidal ideation or injuries related to self-harm or suicide attempts. If a certain county reports an above-average number of suicide-related visits for a certain age group, this will trigger an ESSENCE alert for that county and age group. These alerts will be issued weekly by TDH.
Join RHA and Dr. Erica Schlesinger Hurst, Pharm.D., Assistant Chief Pharmacist with the Tennessee Department of Mental Health & Substance Abuse Services (TDMHSAS) for a virtual training on MAT/MOUD (Medication Assisted Treatment/Medication for Opioid Use Disorder) and Stigma on August 22, 2023, from 11:00 am - 12:00 pm CDT.
Attendees will learn about and understand the change in brain function during active opioid use disorder, gain the ability to identify medications used to treat opioid use disorder, and have a comprehension of the various stigma affecting the treatment of opioid use disorder.
For the first time across three decades of research, a greater proportion of Rural Healthy People respondents selected “Mental Health and Mental Disorders” and “Addiction” in their lists of top Healthy People priorities for rural America, than did “Health Care Access and Quality.”
Read the findings of the Rural Healthy People study here.
Join us for a virtual training webinar on Naloxone on June 27th from 11 am - 12 pm CDT! Topics to be covered include the causes and impacts of the overdose epidemic, the impact of substance misuse on the brain, harm reduction principles, recognizing and responding to an overdose, and how to administer Naloxone.
Presenter:
Marissa Valentine
Sevier County Regional Overdose Prevention Specialist (ROPS)
Sevier County Office of Alcohol and Drug Programs
Sevier County C.A.R.E.S.
Rural Health Association of Tennessee (RHA) has released an RCORP Drug Take-Back Event Flyer. Attached below is a flyer template with space for event details and a logo, as well as a PDF of instructions for using the flyer template. If you have a drug take-back event coming up, get the word out by using the resources below!
View the instructions and editable flyer here.
Rural Health Association of Tennessee (RHA) has been awarded a $1million grant from the Department of Health and Human Services to combat Substance Use Disorder (SUD) in rural Tennessee over the next three years.
The announcement comes during National Recovery Month – an observance to bring public awareness surrounding mental health and addiction recovery. Tennessee, via the Behavioral Health Safety Network, prevention coalitions, and other change agents, have achieved many successes toward reducing Substance Use Disorder in the state. Most notably, opioid prescriptions have decreased statewide, resulting in fewer deaths involving opioids obtained through a prescription. Targeted prevention, treatment, and recovery programs do work.
